As an Early Childhood Consultant and Trainer, I have the wonderful and amazing opportunity to work with children from infancy up to school aged. While I have loads of fun working with my students and teachers one thing was not fun, getting colds. When I began working in childcare centers I could not believe I often I got colds. It is no fun trying to do your job sneezing and hacking all over the place. You feel miserable, your head is pounding or you’re all stopped up, it’s terrible. You also don’t want to spread germs to the children and other staff members. The babies and children were cute and adorable but the germs weren’t. In a child care setting there are steps you can take to keep the spread of germs down.

One easy place to start is with hand washing. This might seem obvious and you might do it and teach your children to do it, but are you doing it correctly. There are 9 steps to correct hand washing. Nine steps you say you’ve got to be kidding. No I am not, I was very surprised too, but after reviewing them it all made sense. In a child care center there is a lot of sharing and touching going on. Also because there is not a lot of space per person and children and adults are in close proximity to one another it is very easy to spread germs.

It is recommended that a hand washing poster be posted in bathrooms to remind children and staff the correct way to wash hands and avoid germs. This is also a great practice when you’re out and using public restrooms. Since children spend much of their time in school, this is a great place to start.

1. Check and make sure you have all of your supplies. like paper towels and soap. If possible avoid those air dryers. Paper towels are much more useful.

2. Turn on the water, it should be between 60-120 degrees.

3. Moisten hands and apply liquid soap.

4. Rub hands together and all over out of the stream of water, making sure to get in between the fingers and both the inside and outside of the hands. You should rub vigorously for at least 20 seconds or the time it takes to sing the “Happy Birthday” song. In some of my schools they have a Hand Washing Song. It is sung in the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”.

Scrub, scrub, scrub your hands .

Get them nice and clean.

Scrub all over, in between.

Get them nice and clean.

5. Rinse under running water and leave water running.

6. Dry hands with a paper towel.

7. Turn off the water using paper towel.

8. Throw away the paper towel in a lined garbage can.

9. Use hand lotion as needed. I didn’t think this was such a big deal at first until the instructor who is a nurse, explained how you didn’t want your skin to get cracked from dryness because that was an opportunity for germs to get in.

Since most germs are spread by hand, keeping your hands and your children’s hands clean and moisturized will do a lot in helping to cut down on the amount of germs. How do you help to prevent the spread of germs? Please share them with us, we’d love to hear from you. Please share this post with your friends and family and also comment below.